Designer Accused of Copying His Own Work By Stock Art Website 380
the_harlequin writes "A successful designer, who has a showcase of his own work available online, has had a stock image site accuse him of copyright infringement over his own illustrations, citing damages of $18,000. The story doesn't end there; the stock photo site hired lawyers, who have contacted the original designer's clients. The lawyers told them the designer is being investigated for copyright infringement and their logos might be copied, thus damaging his reputation. 'My theory is that someone copied my artwork, separated them from any typography and then posted them for sale on the stock site. Someone working for the site either saw my [LogoPond] showcase or was alerted to the similarities. They then prepared the bill and sent it to me. The good thing is that the bill gives me a record of every single image they took from me. That helps me gather dates, sketches, emails, etc. to help me prove my case. The bad thing is that despite my explanations and proof, they will not let this go.'"
Slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.jonengle.com.nyud.net/2009/04/accused/ [nyud.net]
Coral Cache (Score:3, Informative)
hire a lawyer ASAP (Score:2, Informative)
Judging by your description, I'm guessing that you haven't registered the copyright of your images.
Big mistake. If you don't register a copyright within four months of publication, you cannot get statutory damages. You can only recover actual damages, and the burden will be on you to prove them.
1. Hire a lawyer
2. Register your copyrights (you still have to register before you can file suit)
3. File suit (not just for copyright infringement, you clearly have a claim for defamation as well)
4. Send DMCA notices to the site, the site's ISP, and any of the site's customers that are using the images (and the customer's ISPs).
Re:How do you prove you created the content (Score:1, Informative)
The artist generally produces a much higher-quality version of the content than that which gets uploaded. So just show up in court with the high-quality version to prove that you authored it, particularly if you have a vector version and the one in the wild is bitmapped.
Re:hit them back (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like stockart are good at doing this sort of thing. See this blog post [whatdoiknow.org] for more info.
Destroy them (Score:4, Informative)
They're trying to destroy him so he has to turn around and crush the scum bags.
Why the lawyers won't let it drop (Score:5, Informative)
Something similar happened to me and I knew the lawyers realized they had no case but they wouldn't let it drop as long as their client was paying. My mother was a judge, so I knew how to aproach this. See the lawyers would never bring this to trial because the judge would repremand them when it was so clear they had no case. But that won't stop them from threatening me. So, first, because I wasn't a lawyer, I sent copious letters to the lawyers and their client repeatedly telling them they in as many ways that they had no case. Each letter sent to the lawyer cost the client money. Each letter sent to the client cost the client money when they turned the letter over to the lawyers as they must. Each reply from the lawyer, and they must reply to each letter, cost the client money. You can't wear lawyers down, but you can wear the client down.
Do not have a lawyer send the letters. It is considered unethical for a lawyer to send a letter to the another lawyer's cleint and it is really the client you want to get to.
Re:hit them back (Score:5, Informative)
By "intended purpose" you mean, of course, the exact same purpose it's always used for
Except for when it's used to remove material that isn't infringing the complainant's copyrights, either submitted by some sort of drooling subhuman (against a file manager [slashdot.org]) or a pissed off lawyer (numerous takedown notices for parodies) or at random (like this tutorial video [slashdot.org]) or by someone who just has no clue how this copyright thingy is supposed to work (Protip: unless you design furniture from cardboard boxes, pictures of furniture from cardboard boxes do not infringe your copyright [slashdot.org]).
It's a slashdot bias, actually. We only hear about the fuckups here. Letters used for their intended purpose come and go all the time without notice.
some IANAL suggestions (Score:5, Informative)
what your counsel needs to do
1 begin a counter suit in a GO FOR BLOOD type mode
2 file an injunction with the court preventing them from "discussing details of the case(s) with parties not currently involved with the case" (why are they telling your customers that the status of their purchase may be in question??)
3 file a DCMA notice on the images in question
4 get lots of discovery, lots and lots of discovery
what you need to do
1 stop talking about the case! your last post should be that you did the DCMA notice and got your injunction
2 contact all of your clients and inform them of the situation and offer to send them proof of copyright (higher res version with predated meta stamps or whatever)
3 remember your actions should be clean and above the board (but hire a team that speaks MoFo grade law)
Re:hit them back (Score:5, Informative)
No, "intended purpose" means protecting someone's legal copyright.
As opposed to:
- sending takedown notices for content that clearly doesn't infringe copyright
- warping copyright law to stop sales of compatible hardware (e.g. printer ink cartridges)
- preventing security researchers from publicizing software flaws that are putting users at risk
Re:hit them back (Score:5, Informative)
I feel that both your comment and its moderation are woefully ignorant of the point of the parent's comment. I refer you to the previous slashdot story. [slashdot.org]
Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims."
So, no its not the "exact same" purpose its "always" used for. In this case it appears it would be used for be used for its proposed intention. As for the "unknown reason" for sympathy, it appears that its not the the use that more than half would be being used.. to diminish competition.
Re:Suprised this isn't more common (Score:4, Informative)
sxc.hu has some excellent photographers, and they have to patrol photolia and other sites to keep the image thieves from uploading works they didn't shoot.
Re:hire a lawyer ASAP (Score:2, Informative)
Trademarks are registered, not copyrights. Since the US adoption of the Berne convention in 1990 copyrights are implicit. They don't need to be registered.
Re:hit them back (Score:3, Informative)
One of my favorite lines from this letter that I've read a few times in the past year (regarding them suing him):
Re:This is not a bad thing! (Score:3, Informative)
Punitive damages vary state by state, and the tendancy is for more, not less states these days to award punative damages
Copyright is a federal law, and the statutory damage range is spelled out in chapter 5 of the copyright statute. By "states" did you mean "federal court districts" or "federal appeals court circuits"?
Re:Countersuit (Score:3, Informative)
I found this out first hand when I took a former employer to court and tried to get a other former employees to back me up.
Less of a problem than you think. I was one of those ex-employees in a case against one of my former employers, and while I was perfectly happy to testify (said employer was a crook) my willing cooperation was not necessary. The attorney told me that while he definitely appreciated my attitude, he was going to send me a subpoena anyway. So, it doesn't really matter if your friends (ha, ex-friends now I imagine) wanted to testify or not: if they get a subpoena they show up in court, or face the consequences.
Re:Unethical? (Score:3, Informative)
Do not have a lawyer send the letters. It is considered unethical for a lawyer to send a letter to the another lawyer's cleint and it is really the client you want to get to. I have no idea where you're pulling that from, but it's gotta be a place where the sun ain't shining too often.
It's true, though it is as much professional courtesy as ethics.
Re:hit them back (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks for posting this again; I think the spirit contained within that letter is something that may be helpful and inspiring for the person facing this current predicament.
I love reading that Bluejeanscable letter..I've read it before, but reading it again once more just fills me with glee....To see a corporation engaging in abuse of the legal system against the small guy, and to see the fuck up and have chosen THE WRONG GUY to fuck with, and to enjoy the letter point by point as he shuts down their weak, frivolous, unethical and possibly fraudulent argument then deliver the coup-de-grace, (how the bluejeans cable guy has significant experience litigating and is just itching for them to try to proceed)...
In this day and age it just fills me with joy...I only wish every abuse of the legal system could be met with such a challenge...
Re:that was fast (Score:5, Informative)
What do I have (and by I, I'm just meaning any photographer in general)? Well, for one I've got an original file of that same image. Perhaps it contains slightly more resolution than the photo you've got (maybe it was downsampled, cropped, or modified in some other way). Perhaps it's in raw format, and that raw file can be converted (using the right settings) to generate the supplied art. The metadata in that file (camera, lens, focal length, focal distance, shutter speed, aperture, iso, capture time, etc) can be used to verify several things, like is the angle of shadows consistant with the time of day, is the depth of field consistant with what you'd get from the indicated lens+settings, etc. Of course, all of that could theoretically be reverse engineered from the photo, but it would take quite a bit of effort and be prone to error.
I then also have a couple other photos of the same scene from slightly different angles. I've got dozens (if not hundreds) of other images from the same location or event. Evidence like that would be MANY orders of magnitude more difficult to fake. If you could fake that, you'd have no need to steal images because you could obviously just fabricate any photo you'd like.
Of course, if that's not the nail in the coffin, then there is also the fact that I (hopefully) registered the photo with the copyright office prior to your first documented usage of the image. And barring that, maybe I've sold the image to some other company before your first documented usage, and they can be called on to testify to that.
In short, even in the film days, an original negative was the least of the evidence a photographer had to prove his ownership, and in the age of digital photography, that same evidence is still every bit as useful.
Re:hit them back (Score:3, Informative)
The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse [chillingeffects.org] has a searchable database [chillingeffects.org] of DMCA notices, and other take down requests, but they rely on either the sender [chillingeffects.org] or receiver [chillingeffects.org] to report it to them.
Re:hit them back (Score:4, Informative)
You are wrong.
Not in your first statement, but your second.
Its not inverse natural selection, if we don't change something we most certainly will not survive based on what we are doing to our enviroment.
I don't mean global warming or any of that crap where we think we're the center of the universe, simply that between the population growth and the ignorant douche bags we're keeping alive rather than letting them end up on the Darwin awards, that we WILL have to come fact to face with natural selection in the future. The exact reason, I donno, hopefully I never will, but natural selection WILL work it all out.
Population booms for a given species do occur very often and generally aren't pretty in the end.
Re:Countersuit (Score:3, Informative)
Any sane court and lawyer would simple compel the companies to produce evidence in order to ensure justice is done.
This sort of thing happens all the time, the courts are rather adept at dealing with it. They've been doing it for a few years you know?
Your coworkers had something to lose by helping you, their jobs could have suddenly started to suck or cease to exist. The worst this guy is going to get is that the customers that already don't want anything to do with him are going to continue to not want anything to do with him, and as such he can ask for even harsher penalties from the courts because no he has lost future wages as well. You would to have had to go after each coworker you wanted to testify, and you could have, but it probably would have been expensive and once you force them into the situation if you're depending on verbal recollection, well, yea, its hard. However if the companies in question have data retention policies then they will get in trouble for not following those policies if they intentionally destroy evidence outside of those policies. So ... a simple court order compelling them to produce it would likely result in them producing it. Like you or not, its far easier to just give you the documentation than to fight you in court when you start going after them for destroying evidence.
Re:This is a sign of the times. (Score:4, Informative)
And did you ask for proof of ownership provided by the other person? They have to show it to you as your next step, according to the DMCA is court proceedings where you'll have to show them you've already done the first 2 steps.
Re:hit them back (Score:3, Informative)
Just another example of why I prefer a non-State world. We don't need laws to protect ourselves.
Really? I'd rather have laws that protected my basic rights. I'd really rather not live by the "law of the jungle", and be subject to the wishes of whoever can muster the most armed force in my particular area.
I recognize that your preferences may differ. In that case, you are free to move to some of the more lawless portions of this world. Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo come to mind. I'm sure the residents of those locales feel that they're living in paradise just because they're not subject to the rule of law.
Re:It's time for digital timestamps. (Score:3, Informative)
No, you're confused. The point here is to have a hash proving the date you owned the original. So long as you don't actually lose all copies of the original file you can use other methods to compare the original and the claimed "copy" - it's the proof that you had the original file at a particular date that's important here...